Evaluation 1: In what ways does your magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music magazines?

  Masthead:
My masthead was influenced from NME’s masthead. The way that it uses the abbreviations of words, New Music Express really inspired me to create a masthead just like it with my own words. I chose Music Unlimited because I thought that the name showed the diversity of the music industry and how there is no right or wrong of which genre of music you choose. When doing the audience research questionnaire I found that indie music was the most popular genre. This really stood out to me, because it is not a mainstream type of music I wanted to create a magazine that would speak and relate to my target audience who obviously liked that type of music, so that they could have a magazine that was filled with their favourite type of music. After deciding the name I thought that the masthead needed to be different from the NME one, so I went through stages of six different designs of the two letters MU and decided that the one I chose was edgy enough for the indie genre and different so that it would blend with the rest of the magazine cover. There is no other masthead on the market quite like my masthead; this is a great selling point for the masthead because it would not be mistaken for any other magazine. The masthead follows the normal conventions of a magazine front cover because it is very bold and stands out against the rest of the front cover; this is what magazines tend to do. For example Clash has very bold lettering, in white, but still quite similar to the way mine is standing out. NME has bold lettering but because it is already an established magazine the letters do not overlap the image on the front, as mine does. The reason I did this was because the name of the magazine would not be as obvious if it was behind the main image, so to get the name noticed it needs to overlap the picture. This could be seen as being non-conventional because normally with music magazines the people on the front cover of the magazine is the main focus of the whole magazine, but with mine I have put the masthead as the focus.

Mise-en-scene of images:The mise-en-scene of my images are very simple, following the conventions of music magazines. Most images in music magazines are very simple, this could surprise audiences because they may expect the musicians featured to be playing instruments or singing, however, using images of artists doing such things is extremely rare. In my research of music magazines out of all ten front covers, contents pages and double page spreads only one front cover included the artists holding instruments, only three contents pages included instruments or singing and only three double page spreads included instruments, this shows how unimportant the instrument playing seems to be to the audience and to the magazine images. For my main images I chose a brick wall as the background, because I thought it was simple enough to not take the focus off the two models, but it was interesting enough so that it was not just a plain background. The brick wall could relate to the genre of music because it is quite an ‘indie’ type of background, they are in a bit of a grungy alley way. I think this challenges the conventions of a music magazine because it is not in a glossy studio with the perfect makeup and hair, it is more realistic.
After taking the pictures I made a start on editing them, I wanted to make the picture of the two girls’ back to back stand out more, by adjusting the contrast and brightness. It was very important for me to make the picture look as realistic as possible, and not as if I have edited the image in photoshop. The images on the front cover of the magazines I looked at in my research look realistic and not edited; this is the look I was going for. When looking at the image before and after editing you can see a big difference in the colour of the magazine, this makes it obvious that I have edited the picture but in a way that it has improved the image, and shown how I have used ICT to edit the image well. When going through the editing stages I tried out increasing the image’s contrast considerably but it did not work because it was way too bright and not realistic. It is very important to relate to the genre of music and to the target audience so I thought that if the picture did not look realistic that the audience may not like it.

Costumes and Props:The costumes and props used in the images are very simple, when organising the photo shoot I asked the girls to wear clothes that had quite a ‘rocky’ vibe. One of them wore a t-shirt that was ripped and had the word ‘reckless’ on it, I thought that this was perfect for the vibe I was going for. The other model wore a stripped vest top and a scarf, the girls both look very fashionable at the same time of relating to my target audience which is 16-24. They both wore military boots, which at the moment are very in fashion, and are popular amongst my target audience, I know this from just looking around where I live and the places I go, nearly everyone is wearing military boots, the images therefore will relate to the target audience even more.
When doing the photoshoot, I thought it would look good to include an umbrella as a prop. The main reason I chose an umbrella was to show the girly nature of the band and the original tag line was going to be ‘let the sun shine on them’ so I thought it would have been good to have an umbrella in the picture, however, when looking at the pictures I did not like them with the umbrella, as I thought they looked too cheesy and would not suit the indie vibe.

People:The people featured in my magazine are very different from the usual music magazine cover girls. This is because they are young and quite girly girls. They make an unusual band because there is only two of them, when usually if there are girls on the cover of a music magazine there is more than 3 or they are solo artists. This makes not only the magazine unique but also makes the band more interesting and making them more readable. I think they challenge the normal conventions of a music magazine because they come across as two girly girls on the cover of an indie magazine, they might not be what some audiences may expect from this sort of magazine. The front cover could be more bias towards females, because they may look at the two young models and may aspire to be like them.

Font and Styles:The fonts I have used in the magazine are very simple, not taking any distraction away from the images and the main message coming across from the magazine. The font I used throughout the whole front cover was Perpetua Titling MT this was because I thought it would be good for the cover titles, because it is in capitals and it is not hard to read. When used bold it stands out greatly increasing the impact of the font because it can be seen from a distance easily. The only problem with it is that even when making it bold the letters tend to be a bit thin. This could make it hard to read but I made sure that I used colour and stroke to make sure it did not blend in with the background. I liked this font, because it is sophisticated for the target audience but nor boring, because it is very different from default lettering. I used this font also in the contents page because I thought it would look good if the lettering flowed throughout the pages. For the double page spread I did not use it for the main text, instead I used MV Boli, I used this font for the main text because I thought it would look good, as if it has been hand written, and it looks like quite a girly font, not one that may be used for a male band article. For the double page spread I used bright pink for the font colour, because again I wanted to stress that they are girly, but with a slight edge in their music.

Copy/Written Text:The text in my magazine is all original, for the front cover I made sure that the text was short and catchy. The titles, e.g. Plus! The 2011 Festivals and Gigs show how it is a new feature just for this week’s issue, making the audience more prone to pick up the magazine. My target audience is the type that would go to festivals and gigs regularly so it was important to get that on the front cover so that they would be interested. Using flash words like New and Plus makes it more interesting and making them stand out was my main objective with the front cover text. I have followed the normal conventions of a magazine because I used these flash words which a great deal of music magazines does use. I wanted the main cover title to be short and straight to the point, so that it would be easy for the audience to read from a distance.
On the contents page, there is the list of contents, for which I put a little description under each title to make it more interesting and more functional. I saw this in a  number of music magazine contents pages, so I followed the conventions of a magazine for that, making sure the descriptions were not too long, just a teaser. I thought it be appropriate to include an editor’s note, for which a lot of magazines do include, not so much music magazines, making it challenge the normal conventions of music magazines. I thought that this would be a nice touch to the contents page making it more realistic.
For the double page spread text I used informal language so it was more like a conversation rather than a straight forward boring interview.  All the text is original, and even though I did not actually interview the girls, because I know them I tried to focus on what they would actually say if they were in that position, making it more realistic and relatable to my target audience.

How is genre reflected in your magazine?The genre of my magazine is very important to it; this is because it is what defines a music magazine from other magazines. On the front cover, I included the words ‘Indie scene’ so that it could be obvious to the reader that the genre of music these girls play is indie, which is most likely to be the target audience’s favourite music genre, I know this from my audience research. I have followed the conventions of existing magazines because I have included the music type of the magazine on the front cover so that it is very obvious what type of magazine this is. I made sure that the font went well with the indie rock music style; if the lettering was curvy then it would not look good with the rest of the cover, so I went for a sophisticated font that had sharp edges. This was very much following the conventions of a music magazine, because the font will always go with the type of music that the magazine is representing.

Layout of the Front Cover, Contents Page and Double Page Spread:

The layout of my front cover is very conventional to normal magazines. The cover title is the biggest font and below the main image which is what it usually is. The masthead is at the top left of the magazine, this is very common for any magazines, so it thought it wise to put it there, because there must be reasoning behind why every magazine puts their masthead there. I think the main reason for it is because it is where most of our eyes directly go towards so it is important to have the masthead in that position. I have put the barcode at the bottom of the page; this is very conventional for a magazine. I decided to put it in the bottom right hand corner because that side of the cover was very plain and did not have anything on it, so I wanted to keep the balance of the whole cover. When looking at Echoes magazine I noticed how the text was all on one side and the image was dominating purely on the other side, so I wanted to follow the normal conventions of a magazine with text and image balanced out on the whole cover. The image is not as conventional as the other aspects of the magazine, the two girls posing as smiling back to back is a very rare image to appear on the front cover a music magazine, it is normally a rock band or solo artist posing quite moodily, for example, Kerrang! magazine would never really have two girls smiling on the front cover of their magazine. I included flash words like ‘plus’ and ‘new’; this is following the conventions of a music magazine because it is very common to see flash words on the front cover of a magazine, because it is including and inviting the potential readers into the magazine and interesting them to find out what is inside, I saw this when researching covers on NME magazine.

The layout of my contents page is very conventional because it is functional with a structured layout. The background is white which is the colour of most of the contents pages that I looked at in my research, nine of the ten contents pages I looked at had white backgrounds, and even the last one had a plain black background showing that it is the conventional design for a contents page. The layout of the contents page is quite simple and not cluttered. I included three images because I thought that if there was only one image and the rest being text the page may look boring and I want to interest my readers. The images are quite non-conventional because there is a picture of the CD that is a freebie in the contents page, so that the audience know what they will be getting, this could be similar to MOJO magazine, where they have the image of the CD on the front cover.
Like many of the other contents pages I have split the list of contents into sections, of ‘The Music’ and ‘The Stars’. This is a very conventional factor of the magazine, meaning that the reader can be directed to the page they want to go to easily. By using the images as a way of showing what number the page is on, I have achieved what most contents pages do and made the page so that I was following the forms and conventions of real magazines.

The layout of my double
page spread is reasonably conventional to real music magazines. The main image is on side of the double pages taking up that page. I tried to balance the pages out by including images on the other side with text in the middle. The three images on the side, could be unconventional because it is rare that you pictures in a different colour to the actual image. The black and white effect is a great way to break up the pages and separate the image form each other. I did not follow the forms and conventions, because out of all the research i did into music magazine's double page spread none of them had a main image and then a few on the other side. I took inspiration from NME's double page spread for the background, I think the black background looks great and goes well with the rest of the page, apart form NME none of the other magazines had a coloured background, so maybe this was not following the normal conventions of real magazines.

Conclusion:
To conclude I feel that I have stuck to the forms and conventions of real magazines throughout all these stages of creating my magazine. In many aspects I have followed the normal conventions to satisfy my audience, I wanted to change some things but overall I felt that it was important to make sure the magazine was not too different because I wanted my reader and audience to be able to relate and recognise that it was a music magazine and want to read it. I felt that my image on the front cover is a way of challenging these conventions giving the reader something new to look at and enjoy. The main objective for me was to make sure that the magazine looked like a real magazine, I think that my contents page looks quite similar to Clash magazine's contents page, this is because even though it is only one single page, the colours and image are quite similar.